Better Now
by Bat-J
Summary: Deep down she knew, she couldn't explain how but she knew.


**I do not own anything.**

"Do you know what suffering means?" Red asked her trying to get comfortable on the luxurious couch he was sitting on. An angry nod was the only answer he received. "I don't think you do." He went on, the comment making the woman even more furious. "I'm not talking about physical pain, not the ones that cut your flesh – everyone is familiar with those – I'm talking about the emotional ones, the ones that go so deeply into your core they change who you are, as if the tremendous agony was melting your insides to get to your DNA. It is torture and it lasts – Oh it lasts – it eats you from within until the day you finally accept who you became. Fortunately there are few situations in which one can be confronted to these kind of feelings but this fact will be your downfall because you realize then that no one around you can quite grasp what you're going through. Suddenly you're alone and you _feel_ alone … this is when it begins. You're changing but you don't want anyone to know, to see. So you hide … You dig a hole in your own mind and you push inside every little things reminding you of who you were before, your valors, your principles, you don't need them anymore. And one day you look in a mirror and you don't see despair anymore, you only see this new face, this new you."

Their eyes met and a tremor went through his body when he saw the hateful glare with which she was looking at him.

"When you go through this Lizzy you can never go back." He insisted in a last tentative to convey the danger of such endeavor.

"I'm not like you. I'll never be like you." She said her jaw clenched.

"We are more alike than you think." He said sustaining her stare. "You never were a very good profiler Lizzy, not because you didn't have the skills but because you were too preoccupied by your attempts to keep them hidden from everyone. You tried, so hard, but in doing so you were just pretending to be someone else. You have the mind of a criminal and the feelings of a cop, you want to defend the defenseless but you are frustrated by the means you're given to do so." He stopped, his look focused somewhere outside the window. Not for long though, "People like us Lizzy, in this world, we can thrive only if we choose to live in a gray area, with our own moral compass. But taking this step, know that you won't have a net to protect you, no one at your side easying your fall, no hand stretch out to help you get up."

They were alone still, Dembe strangely absent. It didn't feel right standing there next to him after everything that happened.

"You want answers and I understand ..."

"... You understand?" She asked in a scoff, "You don't know what it's like to be me right now. To realize one day that all your life has been a lie, a lie created by some deranged psychopath with a deluded attachment to you. You don't know anything," she said with venom "You think you do because you convinced yourself that you knew me but i'm not a puppet you can control with a few strings, I'm a person. I have thoughts and feelings of my own, I have free will. If you understood you'd tell me the truth, the whole truth once and for all."

"I'm not going to do that Lizzy. I'm not going to put you in a position where I know you will be in danger."

"No, you won't tell me the truth because you need me in the dark, you need me hanging." She said showing she knew a lot more about their dynamic than he expected. "When I didn't want to tell you the location of the Fulcrum, the reason you found behind it was the fact that you thought I was too afraid to see you disappear from my life. But you're the one who is afraid to see me leave. You're afraid that once I know you will be of no use for me anymore." She waited but he remained silent. She hated this about him as much as the half truth she knew he was feeding her. "You say you want to protect me but you're the reason I need protection. Despite that, I keep putting myself out there, jeopardizing my own life to save yours. I gave up every hope of security when I gave the Fulcrum to the Director and I did it to make sure you won't end up with a bullet in your brain. So tell me, who is in need of whom? How many times do I need to save you for you to give me back my own life?"

He waited carefully thinking of his answer. "The truth can sometimes be worse than the lies."

"I don't know what I was expecting coming here" She said preparing herself to leave, "I'll find answers by myself."

"No good will come out of it." He tried before letting her disappear from his sight. To his surprise, she stopped.

"That day after Anslo Garrick's attack on the Post Office, when you decided to go under the radar, you called me and I asked you a question, do you remember?"

Of course he remembered.

"Did you lie to me?" She asked without turning back.

He searched her eyes but she refused to face him. "I never lied to you."

"But you're never completely honest either. Was it one of your half truth?"

"Your father is dead Lizzy."

It was the same words he had said to her months ago. He thought at the time that it would be enough, that it would put an end to this but as he should have expected, the young woman was relentless. He looked at her waiting for her next move, expecting her to leave but again she did something he didn't see coming.

"If I had asked you this question 25 years ago, what would have been your answer then?"


End file.
